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Jan 1st, Texas to increase tax on cigarettes by $1. Texas will increase the sales tax on cigarettes from 41 cents to $1.41 on Jan 1st. Hoping to fund schools and fight the 1.5 billion dollar health care bill from smoking related illnesses.
comment posted at 5:50 PM on Dec-26-06

Best wishes for a Christmas of peace and joy and a New Year of triumph over terrorism! from the U.S. Citizens Committee to Keep and Bear Arms, a.k.a. "the Common Sense Gun Lobby".

"If Jesus came back and saw what's going on in His name, He'd never stop throwing up." -- Woody Allen (Hannah And Her Sisters, 1986)
comment posted at 4:34 PM on Dec-26-06
comment posted at 5:59 PM on Dec-26-06

In the tradition of great cat sites, with a dose of this holiday's hot item, comes WiiKitty! (via Kotaku)
comment posted at 12:54 AM on Dec-23-06

Questions to ask before marrying.
comment posted at 12:47 AM on Dec-21-06
comment posted at 6:50 AM on Dec-21-06
comment posted at 7:15 AM on Dec-21-06

Pitchfork has unveiled their Top 50 Albums of 2006 (don't also miss their Top 100 Tracks of 2006). Rolling Stone's Top 50. Prefix's Top 50. Stylus's Top 50. For those who love these lists, the deluge has only begun...
comment posted at 11:37 PM on Dec-20-06

MeFite John Hodgman's latest book, The Areas of My Expertise, is free through iTunes today.
comment posted at 10:22 PM on Dec-19-06
comment posted at 11:45 PM on Dec-19-06
comment posted at 1:11 AM on Dec-20-06
comment posted at 2:23 AM on Dec-20-06

iliketotallyloveit is what you get if you apply the digg algorithm to stuff. Users submit their favorite stuff, new or old, and if enough other members agree with its awesomeness their favorite gets posted to the front page (along with where to buy it, of course).
comment posted at 4:49 PM on Dec-19-06

The Riff-O-Matic will help you learn to play rock & roll guitar, or at the very least, will help you play several of the most famous riffs in rock & roll history. Using a combination of sheet music, tablature notation & embedded (flash) audio & (windowsmedia) video, the site will get you up & playing the intro to Stairway to Heaven in the guitar store in no time. If you don't have time to learn whole songs, there's even an abridged list of the 10 Greatest Rock Riffs of All Time.
comment posted at 1:08 AM on Dec-19-06

The IT Crowd is a sitcom produced for Channel 4. Although it follows the traditional laugh-track sitcom format, it manages to have some really funny moments. Season one was only six episodes, but season 2 is due to start this January. Chris Morris is particularly good as the CEO, Denholm. Full episodes can be found on YouTube and Google Video.
comment posted at 10:19 PM on Dec-18-06
comment posted at 3:27 AM on Dec-20-06

'You' are Time's Person of the Year. Seriously.
comment posted at 10:04 PM on Dec-17-06

Word Jazz podcast: Ken Nordine (wiki) not only has a blog (of sorts), but is podcasting parts of the ineffable Word Jazz. The net just got a little cooler.
comment posted at 7:34 PM on Dec-14-06

Oh, Henry! Soft spoken Henry Rollins says a few words about internet freedom. (NSFW)
comment posted at 10:07 PM on Dec-14-06
comment posted at 12:46 AM on Dec-15-06

Bad parents suck. Which one of these two situations calls for a deeper banishment in hell? Should it be the mother from Arizona who leaves her 2-yr old in the car with the valet, but brings her dog into the mall? Or should it be the parents from Louisiana who slept through their 6-wk old puppy chewing off their month-old baby's toes?
comment posted at 11:24 PM on Dec-13-06

Mr. Smith Goes to Venus — part 1^CC and part 2^CC. Legendary space artist Chesley Bonestell shows us what family vacations^CC should have been like in Coronet Magazine, March 1950. [Click thumbnails for LARGE images.]
comment posted at 10:18 PM on Dec-13-06

Millions and Millions (Last pixel sold on Sun, 1 Jan 2006) and Millions _(previously) and millions _(previously) and Billions and Billions. How many millions How many Billions? Trillion _(previously). and remember when Google was just a huge number? A Bajillion? And of course a Brazillian.
comment posted at 11:51 PM on Dec-13-06

Leslie Harpold Remembered When her annual advent calendar was not updated after December 7th people all over the web started to express concern over Leslie Harpold's absence. Sadly it has been confirmed that she died sometime last week. I think Leslie would be touched to see the way friends and strangers have spontaneously posted remembrances of her via a medium she loved and help mold.
comment posted at 8:27 PM on Dec-12-06

Take a cyber tour of the Nong Shim factory! Yay! Warning: Portions may require ActiveX control. Includes sound, especially music, voice, and a chime every few seconds. Discontinue use if you experience any of the following: overstimulation, understimulation, rage, anguish, nausea, seizure, uncontrollable craving for shrimp crackers, or an erection lasting more than four hours.
comment posted at 11:38 PM on Dec-11-06

Build Your First Surfboard.
comment posted at 4:17 AM on Dec-11-06

Adios Viejo! Pinochet dies!
comment posted at 9:08 PM on Dec-10-06

Abu Ghraib revisited? Savaged by dogs, Electrocuted With Cattle Prods, Burned By Toxic Chemicals, Does such barbaric abuse inside U.S. jails explain the horrors that were committed in Iraq? [...] It’s terrible to watch some of the videos and realise that you’re not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying. Channel 4-documentary on US prisons. (google video. Disclaimer: nasty stuff)
comment posted at 5:56 PM on Dec-10-06

On December 5th, a Croatian man named Nico awoke to find a map his girlfriend had left him featuring a specific path she wanted him to take to work; along the way he saw stencils, paint, aerosol, collage wheat pastes & other art she had laid out in the pre-dawn hours letting him know how much she loved him. The sights Nico saw, in order, are collected here.
comment posted at 2:58 AM on Dec-10-06

The Denial Machine. A 40-min Canadian (CBC) documentary about the "denial industry" - think tanks, scientists, PR firms, focus groups, lawyers, etc.. the issue? Tobacco. Global Warming. It doesn't matter - different issues but the same people. How to be a professional denier and profit.
comment posted at 8:09 PM on Dec-9-06
comment posted at 8:39 PM on Dec-9-06
comment posted at 12:32 AM on Dec-10-06
comment posted at 2:27 AM on Dec-10-06
comment posted at 8:17 PM on Dec-10-06

Clearification Microsoft is launching a viral marketing campaign for Vista. It's only half done - it wraps up in January. Demetri Martin stars in a series of webisodes about his "rare condition". The best part of the campaign are the idle ramblings of Demetri on the main page. The campaign consists of an rss feed, a podcast, and the webisodes.
comment posted at 9:08 PM on Dec-8-06
comment posted at 6:40 PM on Dec-9-06

If you don't watch My Puss then You Suck. But what I want to know is, if you're gonna Eat to the Beat, How Many Licks until you go blind? Maybe we can find out Downtown. Sure, this post is full of video, audio, pop-ups, and is probably NSFW, but you know you want to join in with your favorite songs in praise of the empowered punani! Come on and Put a Little Sugar in My Bowl!
comment posted at 11:21 PM on Dec-7-06

We previously discussed your cell phone as a roving bug, but what about your ipod?
comment posted at 5:43 PM on Dec-7-06
comment posted at 4:35 AM on Dec-8-06

The Art of the Photogravure celebrates the process and the history of the all-but-forgotten art of the hand-pulled photogravure. In addition to the extensive collection of works from early masters to contemporary practitioners, check out the site's affiliated blog and some rich ambrotypes by site founder Mark Katzman. (via Gordon Coale)
comment posted at 5:54 PM on Dec-7-06

Thirty Short Poems About My Favorite Black Metal Band

by John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats, author of Last Plane to Jakarta.
Some selections, in no particular order- the critically necessary discussion of Mayhem, the love story, the fans. He's only up to sixteen so far, but like an evil advent calendar, there will be more entries as the month progresses.
(and no, I won't spoil the name of the band- you'll find out)
comment posted at 6:08 PM on Dec-7-06

Fark/Fart Filter: One Fart Is All It Takes to Land a Plane. The terrorists have won!
comment posted at 12:01 AM on Dec-7-06
comment posted at 5:24 AM on Dec-7-06

Korea, the Beats, Quality, and Mental Illness: A fantastic interview with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance's Robert Pirsig.
comment posted at 11:34 PM on Dec-6-06

NewsCloud , the site that broke the YouTube Comedy Central takedown story with a reporting engine of missing clips is the first Web 2.0 social journalism site to release its code to the open source community. The PHP and JavaScript code base has extensive features including customizable reader pages and nightly autoposting to blogs.
comment posted at 8:50 PM on Dec-5-06
comment posted at 12:45 AM on Dec-6-06

Content Management Systems I Would Or Wouldn’t Fuck [via]
comment posted at 5:09 AM on Dec-5-06

Unlike the time you gave up on Slashdot, you eventually came back to Metafilter.
comment posted at 10:54 PM on Dec-4-06

Five Blind Boys Of Alabama - Too Close
Supreme Angels - Hush Hush
Soul Stirrers - Listen To The Angels Sing
King Louis Narcisse - This Little Light Of Mine
Goldia Hayes with the Harmonizing Four - Beams of Heaven
Sister Rosetta Tharpe & Choir - Up Above My Head
Hall Johnson Choir - Little Black Sheep
Norfleet Brothers - I Am A Pilgrim And A Stranger
Caravans - No Coward Soldier
Soul Stirrers - I'm A Soldier In The Army Of The Lord
Gospel Paraders - Have You Got Good Religion
Pilgrim Jubilee Singers - Testify
Imperial Gospel Singers - The Lord Will see You Through
Lucy Rodgers Singers - Hold To God's Unchanging Hand

YouTube in the Holy Spirit--mostly old school black gospel...
comment posted at 12:25 AM on Dec-4-06

Wikipedia: Your favorite band sucks, therefore it's deleted! While reading an article in todays WaPo on how Wikipedia is trimming the fat I thought, "silly Canadian band that nobody has ever heard of - who cares, they should be deleted!" Then I went to the Wikipedia article that someone had posted about me to see how it was holding up, and sure enough, those fascists are poised to give me the ax too! Silly American blogger that nobody has ever heard of... Despite my obvious conflict of interest, if entries are accurate what is the greater good of Wikipedia deleting actual information?
comment posted at 4:15 PM on Dec-3-06